Calling John McElroy a Detroit cheerleader is like calling Bruce Dern's character in Black Sunday a party pooper. That said, the journalist is not without his fans, nor a platform. Big Mac writes a weekly column for Autoblog, and regularly lobs underhand pitches at Motown royalty on his Autoline Detroit TV program. So why did Detroit Freep Press scribe Mark Phelan devote precious ink to McElroy's fantasy of reviving GM's battery-powered EV-1? I thought GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz put that the idea to bed on June 30, when he called the concept "fucking nuts" [paraphrasing]. "Things have changed," McElroy tells an entirely credulous Phelan. "At $4 a gallon, it's a completely different market. People would beat a path to GM's door." Yes, "The automaker should dust off the blueprints, stick an assembly line in some underutilized assembly plant — no shortage of those — and hire somebody to take orders." Corroboration comes from no less than the director of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Phelan knocks down the idea– gently. "The Volt will have a small electric generator to recharge its battery if needed, but the underlying technology GM developed for the car also lends itself to all-electric vehicles. Some of those 'EV2s' are already under discussion. As GM contends, the EV1 may not come back, but its children will flourish." Go team go!
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McElroy has a point. The EV1 almost makes GM look like a company with engineering skills that go beyond installing air conditioning into SUV’s. Even if GM didn’t make a penny on them, a car like this would be a great PR coup.
Still, it won’t work. GM can’t afford to lose any more money, and Lutz is right, the car can’t be produced in a cost effective fashion. It would also need to be modified to meet current safety standards, which would delay rollout and increase the cost. With GM against the wall, they have to focus on making cars that they can sell, and not just on PR exercises.
Forcing me to publicly agree with Bob Lutz does make me feel a bit dirty, though. Excuse me, I need to go wash my hands…
Despite what I’ve said in our other discussion of electric cars, I have to say it makes no sense to dredge up a 10 + year old design which was never meant to be mass produced. That’s assuming they didn’t shred the blueprints when they crushed the cars.
I’d say that GM should try to stick to it’s Volt project and see it through, except I’m not sure they have the money for that either.
Maybe they should concentrate on increasing the sales of the 2 or 3 decent vehicles they do have on offer.
I also agree with PCH that seeing eye to eye with Lutz makes one feel the need for a long hot shower. But no matter how hard you scrub….
it would be wild fun to thumb my nose at the oil producers.
Bringing back the EV1 and dusting off 10-15 year old blueprints is not a good idea. The EV1 is dead let it rest in peace (or pieces).
The tech is too outdated and to meet modern day safety standards as discussed is just unfeasible.
GM missed the boat and has to build from what they learned from the EV1 (That is is they have any interest in doing so.
Granted it would be a great PR coup but in the long run the Volt could be all that and more if GM gets it’s act together.
It really is surprising though that the execs they hire all have Master degrees with pedigree of business sense and history. Why did they put all their eggs in one basket…the SUV basket??? Doesn’t the expression “Never put your eggs in one basket” apply to business to?
Rather than “bring back the EV1” they should go back and look at what they did to make it – incredible aerodynamics, lightweight materials, etc. – and put all these things into a NEW vehicle. The Volt’s powertrain idea (electric until the battery runs down, then the gas motor kicks in) is great, but it’s ugly, they haven’t bothered to make it (if it’s their last chance, it should be out NOW), and I bet it will be both expensive to make and be neither light nor particularly aerodynamic.
They aren’t taking any of this seriously. They will bring out the Volt at $35,000 or so, nobody will buy it (preferring the evolved Prius), and they will say, “we tried, there was no market”.
How about, instead of dusting off the EV-1 or making a Hail-Mary like the Volt, we work on simple, achievable stuff like:
* XFE’ing the rest of the fleet to the point where GM is beating Honda decisively in each class
* Getting the two-mode system down to the size where it’ll work in a car that green buyers might actually be interested in (the 9-3/9-5, Astra or HHR) instead of stuffing it in vehicles with the least green demographics in GMs fleet.
How would the EV-1 fair in a head-on with the most popular vehicle on the road, the F-150 pickup? Not well, I suppose. A large problem of efficiency in the US is caused by crash safety.
How about if the US government would mandate retroactive changes to the huge battering-ram vehicles so that they are safer in crashes with other vehicles. Follow that with a switch to European pollution and safety standards so that a plethora of 40 MPG (and higher) vehicles could immediately be imported by the likes of Ford and GM. (Isn’t Ford the #1 vehicle producer in the UK?)
That would get a whole lot of reasonably efficient vehicles into the country and give us much better safety than having EV-1 vehicles getting munched by “light” trucks.
Also, there simply isn’t enough available raw materials for batteries to produce 250k EV-1 style vehicles every year. Importing 250k VW Polos and (euro) Ford Festivas and Foci wouldn’t be out of the question with some rule changes.
Much more realistic than the EV1 revival, what if Honda started cranking out the Insight again? It’s only been out of production for two years and it easily topped 60mpg on the highway in normal driving.
A customer base is certainly there, as evidenced by the lack of used examples (currently just 14 listed on AutoTrader.com NATIONWIDE!) and ’01 models with 100k priced at $16k!
It had four-star crash ratings, livable interior and Honda reliability…I wonder if the guys over in Suzuka (Japan) are thinking the same thing?
It won’t be long now until it’s actually cheaper to have a new car payment, then the price of fuel per month in a current vehicle. My car is paid for and gets 20 mpg.
Say for example I pay $400 a month in fuel. Say the MiEV comes out in 2009 or 2010 and my payment is $200 or $300 a month and no fuel costs?
A fuel burning Volt for $30k or $40k or an electric Mitsubishi for $16k or $20k?
http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/special/ev/index.html
If Nissan, Subaru, or Mitsubishi had an electric for sale today, I’d buy. One of them will be first to market and will sell all they can make. If your name isn’t on that list early, it will be like waiting for a Tesla.
I’d buy an electric Nissan, Subaru, or Honda. Maybe Toyota. Been in one too many awful rental Mitsubishis to visit the Mitsubishi store.
How about if the US government would mandate retroactive changes to the huge battering-ram vehicles so that they are safer in crashes with other vehicles.
I am all for this. The government needs to stop the vehicle size arms race. The H2 should have never been legal to drive on public streets. If I welded Ginsu knives on the front of my car’s hood, I would be cited if not hauled off to the clink. Yet talk about restricting tanks with a bumper at the window height of most cars and people start bleating about their god given right to endanger the lives of everybody else on the road.
Regulation needs to be put into place to allow small, very light weight vehicles. As long as the johnson length challenged are allowed to drive genormous penis enhancers no one will feel safe driving a more practical size of vehicle.
As I said on an earlier thread, GM has a better design they could dust off: the original Saturn SC/SLs – far better quality than the Cobalt/Aveo; far better mileage too; and at least theoretically capable of profitability.
GM might have 5% of the company involved directly or indirectly with the Volt at most. What are the other 95% doing? Still making SUVs? How about getting them on some small cars that might keep the company alive in the meantime?
As for the Saturn SC, please note that it weighs 2400 pounds. Lots of cars that weigh that much get excellent mileage. It doesn’t take rocket science to make a car that gets 30 or 40 MPG. It just takes small size and light weight, two things that will never happen for the average consumer when there are safety issues (real and/or perceived) involving vehicles weighing 2x or 3x as much and with bumpers aimed at a cars windows.
If you wanted to purchase a $40k vehicle that held two people, had other vehicle bumpers aimed at the windows (due to small size), was 1/2 the weight of most other things on the road, and had a super aerodynamic shape, an EV-1 sure isn’t what I would want. In that size/weight/shape/price range there have got to be any number of 40 MPG to 60 MPG possibilities with loads of other benefits. How about a basic Lotus Elise with taller gearing and less souped-up engine (gearing+engine would be just to get the mileage up).
It’s funny, then, that the Aveo and Cobalt are so crappy, if it’s so easy.
I know there’s a lot of emotional capital in the position that Saturn Ruined GM!!!(!), but it’s not true – Saturn made the only good cars GM made for 20-30 years. For a brief time, they even competed with the Civic/Corolla.
The Aveo and Cobalt are crappy because GM management does not believe it can make any money on small cars and because they feel that way, they are right.
Regarding Saturn, it could have been a huge contender right now if it stuck to it’s original mission of cheap and easy to buy.